Lake Creek Senior Turning Baking Passion Into Side Hustle

MONTGOMERY, TX — With a few simple ingredients — flour, sugar, eggs — and a little creativity, Kailee Warren finds her passion, and Montgomery is beginning to take notice.

Warren, a senior at Lake Creek High School, has been honing her baking skills for several years and, through a side hustle called Kailee’s Kakes, is attempting to find out if she can make it a long-term business.

She runs Kailee’s Kakes through Facebook, and a quick glance at the business’s page reveals a plethora of colorful confections and many positive comments about the looks and taste of her creations from customers and friends. In addition to nailing down the baking itself, Warren also has experimented on the business side of Kailee’s Kakes as she routinely runs flash sales and giveaways and often promotes her baking on other Montgomery area Facebook pages.

Warren started the page in March 2020 and has seen it steadily grow over a year and a half to 366 followers.

Live in Conroe or Montgomery County? Click here to subscribe to our free breaking news alerts delivered to your inbox and mobile devices. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and download our free mobile app on Android or iPhone.

As Warren tests out the waters of running her own business, she still mainly sees baking as a hobby for which she maintains a high level of passion. She’s constantly finding ways to push the boundaries of her skill and find new things to try.

“Something about baking has always just interested me, like how you can turn something so simple into something so complicated looking and artistic,” Warren said. “I progressed in my skills by mostly people [coming] to me and asking, ‘Can you make this?’ I’d be like, ‘Well, I can surely try.’”

Warren picked up her zeal for baking at an early age. As often is the case with hobbies in the home, baking was family-oriented for Warren. She along with her cousins would often help her grandmother with many of her recipes when they were young. In fact, when Warren started baking on her own, she turned to many of those recipes to learn the ropes. She still uses them in her baking today.

Warren’s love of baking was also nurtured by her mother, dating back to the “amazing” cakes she would bake each year for Warren’s birthday. Warren said her mother still helps her with tips and tricks, especially with ways to be more efficient with her workspace. She also helps her with the logistics of the business, like deliveries.

“My entire family has been so encouraging and supportive the entire time,” Warren said. “My mom especially … has been my moral support throughout this entire process to encourage me and help me improve.”

Before Warren came up with the concept of Kailee’s Kakes, she got her start several years ago by participating in the baked goods contest at Montgomery Freedom Fest, the city’s annual 4th of July celebration. She was named the winner of the People’s Choice Award, voted on by people attending the festival.

Teachers and classmates have been supportive of her hobby and have offered encouragement in her sales efforts, Warren said. She also has filled orders from the school for various events and even donates some of her confectionary creations to various fundraisers for school clubs. Last year, she donated cupcakes to Lake Creek’s Spanish Honor Society fundraiser for the American Cancer Society.

Her start at the community level has grown into partnerships with local businesses. She’s sold one or two cakes a week to Burger Fresh in Montgomery for about two years, and she also sells cupcakes to Meadow to Market, a boutique that recently opened in Montgomery.

“I was already in the process of looking for someone to bake cakes for us, so it worked out,” Burger Fresh Owner Tae Lee said. “Everyone that buys her cakes, they all like it. It’s a good turnout, and it’s good for our customers.”

Though cakes and cupcakes are her specialty, Warren bakes a wide variety of treats and continues to expand her repertoire. She also makes muffins, cookies and macaroons.

Another experiment she’s excited about recently are hot cocoa bombs, which require her to mold half-spheres of tempered chocolate, fill them with hot chocolate mix and mini marshmallows and fuse them together with more chocolate. The result, once dropped into a mug of warm milk, is a rich, smooth hot cocoa.

With her macaroons, Warren tinkered with recipes trying to make them with all-purpose flour instead of almond flour as another option for people with allergies.

“They are very difficult in the way that if you do one thing differently, you can ruin the entire batch,” Warren said. “After playing with it for a while, I figured it out. I watched a lot of tutorials and looked at different things to figure it out.”

Whether or not Kailee’s Kakes evolves into a full-fledged business down the road, don’t expect Warren to hang up the apron anytime soon. Baking is something ingrained in her daily life, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

“One hundred percent,” Warren said. “I will continue doing this as long as I possibly can.”